Fairy Lights, Sticky Tape and the Annual Tangle: Winton's December Decorating Day

The box marked Xmas

There is a cupboard behind the stage at Winton Social Club that smells faintly of dust, old tinsel and the ghost of a hundred raffle prizes. On the first Saturday of December, someone climbs a stepladder, shifts two crates of tombola stock and a spare tea urn, and pulls out a cardboard box with the word 'Xmas' written on the side in marker pen. The 'a' is missing. It has been missing for years. Nobody has felt the need to correct it.

That box is the starting gun for Winton's annual transformation. Not the lights, not the tree, not the mince pies — the box. Because before anything sparkles, somebody has to find out what survived eleven months in storage and what has quietly given up.

The three-bar heater is switched on at nine

Decorating day starts early, but not in a heroic way. The first volunteer arrives at about half eight, puts the kettle on and clicks the three-bar heater in the main hall to its middle setting. By nine there are usually four or five people, a stack of tea towels and a debate about whether to start with the lights or the tree. The lights always win, because the lights are the problem.

Untangling forty feet of good intentions

The club owns six sets of fairy lights. On a good year, four work. On a bad year, two work and one has a plug that nobody recognises. The testing ritual is always the same: one person holds the plug, another feeds the wire out along the floor, and a third says 'try it now' every few seconds. Bulbs are swapped from a jar of spares that has been on the go since before anyone can remember. If a set is beyond saving, it goes into the box marked 'spares' rather than the bin, because the club has a firm belief that one day it will be useful.

The lights go up with gaffer tape and a certain amount of squinting. They are then plugged into a timer set for four o'clock, so the hall is lit by the time the first evening members arrive. The timer is one of the club's better purchases: it saves a job, saves a fuse, and means nobody has to remember to switch anything off after the Friday night raffle.

The tree question

Choosing the tree is a committee matter, which is a polite way of saying it is discussed at length. The club buys from a local grower and measures the ceiling first — a lesson learned from the year the tree arrived taller than the alcove and had to be trimmed with a pruning saw borrowed from a member's shed. The current preference is for a real tree, because it smells right, but the artificial one is kept in reserve for years when the budget is tight or the delivery falls through.

The tree is always put up in the same corner, next to the radiator, but not too close. The three-bar heater is kept well away from it. There is a fire extinguisher on the wall and a volunteer who knows how to use it, and that is the end of the discussion.

Paper chains and the politics of nostalgia

The paper chains come out every year. They are the same paper chains that have been in the box since the 1990s — faded on one side, repaired with Sellotape, and held together in places by sheer force of habit. One link has a name and a date written inside it in biro. Nobody is quite sure who wrote it, and nobody wants to throw it away.

There is an ongoing conversation about whether to replace them with something newer. It resurfaces every December, and every December it is decided that the old ones have one more year in them. The tinsel is newer, mostly because tinsel does not last. The baubles are a mixture: a few good ones, a few that have lost their caps, and a set of small wooden decorations that a member brought back from a holiday and donated to the cause.

What members can do — and what to leave alone

If you would like to help, the best thing is to turn up on decorating day and ask what needs doing. There is always a job for someone who can hold a ladder, thread a wire or make a round of teas. Good-condition decorations are welcome, but please check with the committee first — storage space is limited and the box is already full.

What is less helpful is plugging things in without asking, moving the timer, or rearranging the paper chains. The chains have a system. It is not an obvious system, but it is a system.

Donations towards the Christmas budget are always appreciated. The club does not spend big on decorations; the money goes on new bulbs, fresh extension leads and the occasional replacement set of lights. Everything else is reused, repaired or borrowed.

What to expect in the run-up to Christmas 2026

The hall is decorated by the second weekend of December. Opening hours stay broadly the same through the month, though the club tends to stay open a little later on Friday and Saturday nights. The function room is booked heavily in December, so if you are planning a party, a birthday or a works do, speak to the steward early rather than leaving it to the week before.

Key dates are posted on the noticeboard and read out at the Friday-night raffle. Expect the lights switch-on, a carol evening, a children's party on a weekend afternoon, a Christmas Eve lunch and the usual New Year's Eve gathering. Times vary, so check the board or ask behind the bar.

A small budget and a big fuss

The club does not have a grand decorating scheme. It has a box, a timer, a three-bar heater and a handful of people who are willing to spend a Saturday morning untangling fairy lights. The result is not glossy, but it is warm, and it is the same warm every year. That is the point. Christmas at Winton is not about new decorations. It is about the ones that come back out of the cupboard, slightly creased, and get put up again.